Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 2.pdf/333

 corn in the ear." Our duty seems to be to suffer nothing that is an object of our senses to pass our notice unexplored, remembering that whatever God has made, is deserving the investigation of the creature who is created in his own image and likeness. And if man is himself a world in miniature, it is especially his duty to explore himself, to make himself acquainted with his own organism.

Why is the searching of the heart and reins attributed to the Lord? Because He is a just God. This cannot be known but by a reference to the uses of the heart and reins in the natural organism. The heart is the bodily organ in man, which best expresses the state of his affections; hence the command, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart;" that is, with the whole of thy affections. The reins, on the contrary, express the thoughts of the understanding; for the reins, or kidneys, are instrumental in cleansing the blood from urinous impurities; and are thus representative of that truth by which the human mind is purified from error and falsehood. This passage then proves that the Lord—who is justice and holiness itself, and who alone knows the internal qualities of man—explores his heart, that the true nature of his affections may be determined; and explores his understanding, that the quality of his thoughts may be ascertained. With the spiritual sense thus seen, how expressive of submission to the divine will is the prayer, "Search me, O God, and prove me: try me, and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wickedness in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."